culation, be they good, bad, or indifferent. The sale, or rather the connexion of the publisher, stamps the fame of the work, and secures a name to the author, should even the production not be intrinsically worth the price of waste-paper, while others of sterling merit are too apt to be doomed to the shelf. The pith of them all is embraced in the Celsian Code, so little space does it require to illustrate a system of dietetics.

SECTION VIII.

MEDICAL IMPOSITIONS, ABUSE OF MEDICINE, MODERN MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE, QUACKS, &c. &c. &c.

BEFORE we trench upon this subject, we ought necessarily to premise, that satire is not aimed at the respectable portion of the Esculapian art. God forbid we should be either so thoughtless or so ungenerous as to make a general and indiscriminating sweep, by rooting up the wheat along with the tares. The subject matter of these observations are strictly confined to

THE ABUSES OF MEDICINE.

This sacred science, once so much belov'd,
By monarchs practis'd, and by peers approv'd,
Wanders, in these our days, throughout the land
Abject-a prey to every vulgar hand .—
This gift of God, so Satan does ordain,
Polluted sinks, a prostitute for gain.
Barbers, perfumers, and a thousand more,
Start up," Physicians" all the Forum o'er.

Old wives with "charms" and "antidotes" are nigh;
Their charms they mutter, and their herbs apply;
Females and males in tottering age around,

All heat their mystic pipkins, and compound;
All abdicate their lawful trades, to follow
This injur'd science, and commence APOLLO.-
The frowsy baker, and shoe-clouting tribe,
Curriers and tailors cry, "prescribe ! prescribe!"
To count them all would fail the poet's lungs;
It asks an hundred mouths-an hundred tongues.

The injuries and vicissitudes of the air, the nature and qualities of foods, the violence of external bodies, the actions of life, and lastly the structure of the human frame, must have rendered some diseases, and consequently medicine, as old as mankind, though much changed and complicated in after ages. In our endeavours, nevertheless, to discover and fix the period when remedies were first employed for the alleviation of corporeal sufferings, we are soon lost in conjecture, or involved in fable. We are, in fact, unable to reach the period of any country, when the inhabitants were destitute of medical resources; and we find among the most uncultivated tribes, that medicine is cherished as a blessing, and practised as an art among the natives of New Holland and New Zealand, in Lapland and Greenland, North America and the interior of Africa. The personal feelings of the sufferer, and the anxiety of those about him, must, in the most uncivilized state of society, have instinctively incited a spirit of industry in procuring the means of relief, under various circumstances of climate and disease; and when

these resources failed, charms, amulets, and incantations were the natural expedients of the barbarian, ever more inclined to indulge the delusive hope of superstition, than to listen to the voice of sober reason.—

Long e'er physicians knew the healing art, `
Disease to quell, or ease the aching heart,
Medicine arose, at first by Heav'n designed,
With balmy wing to bless and shield mankind:
In ev'ry field some wholesome simple grew,
Its use each ruder clown and peasant knew;
Which, cull'd with care, the wish'd assistance gave;
Not prompt to kill, if impotent to save.

From trees, from plants, the easy cure was sought,
And from the murmuring rill, health flow'd unbought.
The friendly limpid draught, the tempʼrate meal,
Ne'er asked the rid of bolus, or of pill.

With equal force their vig'rous pulses beat,
No cordials then to raise the extinguished heat;
No frantic mirth, nor melancholy then-
Heaven's sharpest curse upon the sons of men!
To calm a fever's rage, no arts were try'd,
'Till haply of the doctor-patients died.
Feebly, the limbs no slackened nerves sustain’d;
Hereditary health and vigour reign'd.

But say, my Muse! these happier ages past,
How sickness and disease broke in at last?

From man to man how plagues unnumber'd spread ?
When physic rear'd her scientific head?

Such ilis combin'd, what mortal can endure,

How few outlive the sickness and the cure!

Not long before the flood had left the face of earth,

And lost mankind received a second birth,
Ere luxury arose, with sickness in her train,

And all the frightful family of pain,

Nature's spare wants forsook the homely board;
With mad profusion see each table stor'd!
Invention laboured to debauch the treat,
And whet the jaded appetite to eat :
Intoxicating wines henceforth began'

To inflame the blood-not cheer the heart of man.

That luxury was the cause of bringing medicine into more request is undeniable. As long as man stuck to nature's wants, diseases were few, and easily curable; and that quackery should have ingress at such a time, is the less to be wondered at. Afflicted people were glad to fly to any who held out a hope, however delusive. And notwithstanding, that, at different periods, down to the present day, ignorant empirics have been exemplarily punished, exposed, and buffeted, they continue their system no less destructively, with unabated fury. Indeed we live in a most lenient age; but this is no reason the lives of his majesty's liege subjects should be tampered with.

In the reign of Edward the Fourth, one Grigg, a poulterer, in Surrey, was set in the pillory at Croydon, and again in the Borough of Southwark, during the time of the fair, for cheating people out of their money, by pretending to cure them with charms-by only looking at the patients, or by what is called, casting their water. Of water-doctors we have still no scarcity; and recently, in opposition, as it were, to the barefaced German humbug in the vicinity of Oxfordstreet, we behold an impudent strumpet setting up and advertising with the same ludicrous and obscene pre